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Dudes in positions of literary/academic power attacking female critics for [checks notes] actually reviewing their work *critically* is a problem. Having been on the receiving end of this type of stuff, this really colours my view of Rushdie as a person.
Parul Seghal is a younger WOC writing for the NY Times book review, which statistically makes her an outlier since most criticism that gets printed in the important lit papers is written by older white men. Rushdie should be encouraging a world where there are more Paruls.
Also, and most importantly, she's just GOOD. She's incisive, funny, and I often agree with her takes on new fiction. She stands to generationally advance the paper she writes for. Rushdie is just bitter someone called him on his novel's evident flaws.
And let's note for the record: he never actually addressed the points of her critique!
In an ecosystem where there is no criticism, the novel doesn't get better as a form. There is less boundary-pushing art. Does Rushdie really want to live in that world?
By all means, authors can feel free to complain on their twitter feeds. But like all speech, those complaints have consequences. A dignified letter to the editor might have served Rushdie better; this is just embarrassing.
An attack on criticism for the role it serves in the symbiotic ecosystem of literary forms, in terms of Rushdie's attack on Seghal, is something we should ALL be mad about. It is bad not just in personal terms, but in structural ones-- critics shouldn't be auto-cheerleaders.
The necessity of criticism is something I would hope authors speak out for in this age of austerities and coming days of media cuts. Rushdie just did the opposite. Do better.
If you want to know what fiction looks like when authors don't have a critical sounding board that is truly *critical* feel free to read 'Twilight'. Enjoy living with that quality of prose in all your fiction if there are no critics.
If your response to this now extremely long thread is to say criticism is a secondary form and that somehow renders Seghal's oeuvre lesser to Rushdie's, I would challenge that assumption. Criticism is valuable to both novelists and readers, and to broader society ... (1/2)
... because it forces us to reconsider both our personal and collective aesthetic grounds. A world without criticism-- which by definition also includes some criticism that is negative-- never asks itself what is "good" and why. It's comparatively barren. (2/2)
What Rushdie is doing is yet another example of an insidious and growing phenomenon to render criticism somehow invalid if it's not a glowing review. Thoughtful critique is valuable contra these kinds of incidents. Don't stand for this! Stand for criticism on the whole!
